A Pause to Say Goodbye
by ZukoLuver
Summary: Deathly Hallows. Hermione says goodbye to the only person who mattered to her. HGSS


**Just in case you missed it, this has Deathly Hallows Spoilers in it, so dont read if you havent read it yet!!!**

This is just a small one shot I thought of. A little hurried at the end to show a kind of urgency and desperation. This takes place while Harry races upstairs to look into the pensieve and view 'The Prince's Tale' while Ron and Hermione go to the Great Hall to mourn over dead Fred.

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Without a word she broke from the crowd. Too immersed in their own misery to notice she was gone, they just huddled closer around the body, filling in the gap where she had stood. She didn't belong here, mourning over this body. This wasn't her place. This wasn't her reason to cry. She slipped from the Great Hall and out the door. No one called her back.

Everyone had lost someone dear to them; every still body had a crowd of people weeping. All but one. One body lay alone, without a family or friend; no one to push their hair from their face, no one to bow their head and cry for them, no one to hope against all hopes it was all a lie.

So it was only she who walked across the grass, which was held to her shoes with sticky dark substances she didn't want to identify. She was the only one who noticed the chill coming from the Forbidden Forest, not that she really felt it. Too numb, she walked on to where the Whomping Willow stood, branches erect, thanks to the stick she'd propped against the knot.

She lowered herself into the tunnel and began the long crawl, stopping only every so often to feel her cheeks to make sure they stayed dry. She couldn't afford to lose it here, not when she didn't know what else might be at the end of the tunnel.

Eventually she reached the room in the Shrieking Shack. Keeping her eyes on the tunnel's dirt floor, she held her breath and listened. After deciding no one else was there, she climbed out of the tunnel, eyes still on the floor. In the grayish light she saw the black tip of a boot. Liquid pooled in her eyes as she remembered seeing it tremble on the floor and she had to close her eyes and breathe deeply before she could force herself to look any more. Once she felt she had control over her emotions, she opened her eyes and looked over, and gave a cry as her legs collapsed beneath her.

There he lay, exactly as he had the last time she'd time she'd seen him, as the life left his eyes. What seemed like hours had indeed only been minutes, but as she crawled toward him she noted the blood on the floor was already dried, and his skin was an unnatural hue. Kneeling over his face, she realized his eyes were closed, something one of them must have done before they had left. She brushed the hair back from his face and saw the marks on his neck that had been inflicted by his own master's servant. Gently resting his head on her knees she inspected the marks closer.

There were four of them, no bigger than a fingernail, surrounded by small bruises and dried blood. These tiny little marks, these tiny little life-enders. She looked down once more upon his face: the distinguishing hooked nose, the frown lines around his mouth and eyes. This man was impressive in everything he was, and he was everything to her. She lost her control at the last realization, and she laid her forehead on top of his and cried.

She cried for him, taken from this world in a desperate need for power. For him living a cold life, ostracized from others since childhood. She cried for the other people present in his youth, why couldn't they have reached out a hand to save this drowning boy, and she cried for him not realizing in his last few years, there had been someone who _had_ cared.

But she also cried for herself, for not understanding sooner these feelings she had. Not comprehending why she was happy when he stayed at Grimwald Place over the summer, and why for some unwarranted reason she had felt deeply betrayed when he had killed the Headmaster. Or why, while she knew she should hate him, she had feared for his safety and been utterly relieved to hear of him safe at Hogwarts. She cried and berated herself for realizing only at his death that she loved him.

She alone crouched there, bowing her head and crying, and hoping against all hopes it was a lie; wishing against all wishes he would come back to her.

But she knew it could not be true. She knew that no tears would bring him back, so she tried to force her tears to stop, and gently took his head off her lap. She smoothed his hair down and caressed his head. She kissed his still lips softly, light as a feather, and whispered a promise to never forget him before taking one last look and standing up. She had a job to do and a duty to the wizarding world to complete it.

So it was with great pains that she turned, bent down and crawled into the tunnel. The dirt beneath her hands was turning to mud but she couldn't stop the flow of tears. And even when she had straightened up and begun to stride across the grounds, her cheeks remained wet.

Right there in her mind she knew she had to help bring down the murderer, to save the world and to insure Severus Snape hadn't died in vain. So she kept walking, even though every breath hurt, even though the tears wouldn't stop, even though with every step her heart was torn further and further, because although her heart begged and pleaded and screamed for her to listen to it, Hermione Granger was nothing if not for her mind.

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So what did you think? Good? Horrible? I'm a total Snape/Hermione shipper, so I needed to write how she took his death. Please review, but not if you are just going to say you hate the pairing.

xoxo

ZL


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